luxorious

in aswan, further up the nile, we undertook two grand tasks. the first was to put together enough other people we liked to pay for a trip on an egyptian sail boat called a felucca. the second task was to brave the slavering hordes of felucca captains who infest the strip along the nile. the stretch of street my wife has aptly nicknamed felucca-ville.

you can't walk ten paces without two men saying, 'you whan faluka? hey hey where you from? you know price? i geev you good price!' this is followed by the offer of what is by no one's definition a good price. never-the-less, felucca we whan, felucca we got.

there were six of us on the boat. bartlebee and i; bilge pump bob -- a boisterous shipbuilder from hull; roger the cabin boy -- a kiwi who does a mean hakka; the crow's nest -- an aussie econ Phd student with hair that reached for the stars; a flight attendant from new york; and two austrian uni students who weren't as innocent as they looked.

our three day, three night journey which somehow only took two days and two nights was bitterly cold, devoid of sleep, involved two broken booms, a full day of repair, an unfortunate semi-public defication accompanied by a minor stampede, some seriously bad singing, the iciest beer known to man and a hell of a lot of fun. we swaddled ourselves in blankets and played bluff poker. we made fun of each other endlessly. we laughed. we laughed. we laughed.

it was the first time since we left home that we had a gang to pal around with. that we could wallow in social interaction. that i got to sail on the nile before dawn, watching the sun rise over the date palms.

it's brought us to luxor. and now that we've sufficiently defrosted, we're revving our engines for israel. a few more temples to poke around. a few more reefs to swim along. a few more hours on a bus and a train and we'll be in jerusalem.

from there? it's really anyone's guess. today what sounds good to me is sri lanka.